It’s the last time for a Community Review before Christmas, and as a result there’s only one thing left to cover for the year: 2016 itself.
This one can just be 2016 in gaming or 2016 in general, depending on how your lives have gone over the past year. It’s been a good year for me personally, which makes me feel a little bad considering I’ve seen so many of my friends, personally and professionally, have such a rubbish time.
It’s certainly been a good year for the unexpected, across the board. We’ve had a lot of prominent actors and musicians pass way in a short space of time, David Bowie and Alan Rickman being the one week that comes to mind. But the world also lost Muhammad Ali and Gene Wilder, while in the animation circles Daniel Gerson (co-writer of Monsters, Inc., Big Hero 6) also passed away.
And then you had the major global shocks: Brexit, and of course Donald Trump.
Video games, mind you, had a better time of it. If you liked shooting things in the face, you got plenty of entertainment: DOOM, Titanfall 2, Overwatch, Battlefield 1, SUPERHOT and Destiny all made strong contributions to the year, while even games that fell flat like Infinite Warfare made some improvements in certain places. Hell, even the games that failed miserably like Battleborn still had some merit to them. And that’s not including the surprises on the horizon, like Paladins and the continued revival of Rainbow Six: Siege.
PC gamers had a top time too, with a huge range of quality indies (Pony Island, Stardew Valley, Battlerite), oldschool strategy (Total War: WARHAMMER, Civilization 6) and the ever-growing world of esports (League of Legends, CS:GO, Dota 2). Valve continued to roll out updates to Steam as the year progressed, with perhaps one of the biggest quality of life changes coming in the form of DualShock 4 support recently.
It was a good year for multi-platform titles and console exclusives too, though. Uncharted 4 didn’t quite hit the mark completely for me, but was worth the wait nonetheless. Forza Horizon 3 was unexpectedly charming; Dark Souls 3 managed to crack enough smiles, although the chatter from Mark is that Bloodborne is still probably the best from the combined series.
Final Fantasy 15 finally arrived, and it was wonderful. There were no shortage of fans for The Witness when Jonathan Blow frustrated the daylights out of everyone at the start of the year, and Pokemon Sun and Moon impressed everyone like we thought it would.
But enough from me – what about yourselves? Tell us what 2016 was like for you.
Comments
11 responses to “Community Review: 2016”
I had my fun with 2016. I think every year gets better and this year was no exception.
Probably the Year of the Shooter,
We head Doom, Overwatch, Titanfall and Battlefield One being awesome.
All of them are phenominal in their own way, Doom had a satisfying campaign with some old school mechanics that got modernised to create something both Nostalgic and unique.
Overwatch showed that personality in your game goes a long way even if you don’t have any “story” mode that goes with it.
Titanfall 2 continued to evolve the idea of fluid and skill based movement, allowing for fantastic plays and impressive stunts, it also had a surprisingly great campaign, that only just beat Doom’s in my opinion (That one level pretty gave it enough to beat doom).
And Battlefield went somewhere that rarely gets attention and actually made it fun, and went against the future tech craze that is waning (i assume this from what i’ve heard about Battlefield, i chose Titanfall over it).
Shooters got a good year.
game wise it was good year with Doom, Total Warhammer and Witcher3s Blood and Wine expansion.
Movie wise it was great year with Deadpool, Civil War, Warcraft, Rogue One.
Outside of entertainment its been a fucking shit house year with Brexit, One Nation, Trump, that fucking gorilla, Zika, the deaths of Prince, Ali, Bowie, Alan Rickman, Gene. Infact it was as bad as 2014 when it came to Celeb Deaths
This year was mixed for me
Games wise it was great so many amazing games came out Titanfall 2, Battlefield 1, overwatch, FFXV just to name a few
Life wise it has been a rollercoaster for me. At the start of the year I got a new job and things were starting to look up. Middle of the year I moved into a rental with my girlfriend and then subsequently got let go so went back to work with my former employer. Come into the last two months both my grandparents passed away I got a new job trial for the 9th of next year but my girlfriend of 5 years decided to break up with me.
TL;DR games good, life bad
In the immortal words of Marky Mark: “There’s no need to fear cuz Marky Mark is here!”
Big hugs.
Overall 2016 has been difficult. Gaming wise, it has been dragged up with the release of Overwatch. This game has superceded everything. Blizzard have done an excellent job with it, and I cant see me slowing down anytime soon.
Gaming was great.
Doom (surprisingly brilliant), Battlefield 1 (surprising well handled story), Titanfall 2 (an amazing campaign), Halo 5 (multiplayer continues to improve), Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak (a new Homeworld game, and it was bloody great), a new Mirrors Edge (it was poor, but so what… it’s a new Mirrors Edge game), The Division (Worlds best looking door-closing simulator), CoD: Inifinite Warfare (crap name, but the introduction of fighters made it a solid campaign), Gears 4 (a new studio, a new engine, and a new game), The Witness (a new Johnathon Blow game 200 years in the making).
But in the real world this year just plain sucked.
So many good people gone, so many shit heels being rewarded.
The joint continuing to deteriorate.
Lionhead getting closed.
A new Star Wars film that retroactively made A New Hope a poorer film.
Personally, I finished uni this year… so 2016 is always going to carry a sense of relief; and my sister had her first child.
Mostly, I’m going to be glad it’s gone.
So long 2016… we hardly knew you.
Games:
Stardew Valley
Fire Emblem: Fates
Pokemon SuMo
Otherwise I’d gladly hit reset on 2016, if only so we could still have the ones we’ve lost around for that little bit longer.
2016 year I played alot of games from other years while waiting for Devs to clean up shitty PC ports.
For me it was a year of ports, I spent most of my time this year on GTA5, Divinity and Skyrim for PS4.
Also wouldve been keen to get some more time with BioShock collection
Oh well, picked up Rise of the Tomb Raider, Uncharted 4, Watch Dogs 2 and Dishonored 2 for christmas so at least the start of next year will be new games 😉